Requiem for a dream
by hobgoblin123
Summary: Gerald visits the grave of a loved one. Set roundabout twenty-five years after 'Crown of Shadows'. Warnings inside.
**Requiem for a dream
**

Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy, and no profit whatsoever is intended.

Credits: The phrase 'saved (...) in every way a person could be saved' was borrowed from the movie 'Titanic' (Rose DeWitt Bukater).  
As we presumably all know, the stuff about 'the nature of the One God...' and so on and so forth is from 'When true night falls', page 353.  
'Requiem for a dream' is a movie by the American director Darren Aronofsky (2000).

Warnings: past major character death, so no happy ending.

A/N: This is just a small snippet without much of a plot, but somehow it just begged to be written.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Gazing down on the grave at his feet, Gerald Hawthorne swallowed past the lump forming in his throat. Although they'd been living in the same city for nigh to fifteen years, he had never approached Vryce again, had hidden behind his oh so logical justifications for avoiding his former brother-in-arms like the vilest of cowards, a failure that would haunt him to the rest of his days. Of all the regrets he might harbour in the quiet hours of the night, this one cut deepest.

Of course the man had deserved a new beginning, free from the spectres of the past, let alone that socializing with him would have jeopardized Gerald's continuing existence. After dying twice already, he wasn't altogether keen on an encore. But the barriers shielding him from the true reason for his reticence had come crushing down around him when he had felt the link break a decade ago, leaving him raw and vulnerable as he had never been before.

It was but a small consolation, but Damien had died in a way befitting the priest of the One God and Knight of the Flame he had never ceased to be deep down in his heart. When the wards had failed at long last and the earth had shook without warning in the worst quake of the century, hundreds of miserable shacks and grand estates alike had collapsed on top of their hapless inhabitants, killing roughly a thousand people and injuring a multiple thereof. Unfortunately, most of Jaggonath's hospitals hadn't been spared, and the west wing of the _Necount of Merentha,_ Vryce's employment for the last eleven years, had been reduced to a pile of rubble during the first strong seismic shocks.

Performing surgery in the opposite wing at the time, Damien had suffered no harm in the incident, but had rushed to the scene of the accident as soon as he had stitched up his current patient, eager to come to the victims' aid. Then disaster in form of an aftershock had struck, bringing the still standing remains of the building down in a cloud of mortar and dust and trapping him beneath. He'd still been alive when a rescue team of his surviving colleagues had dug him out hours later, but succumbed to his injuries soon after.

Hawthorne shivered with the force of the surge of red hot anger bubbling up from the darkest abysses of his soul. Damn the man in general and his idiotic helper's syndrome in particular! Monitoring him closely from afar, thanks to the channel, he was well aware that Vryce had never married, had only enjoyed an occasional fling every now and then which had led to nothing, and as for himself, his second marriage, although blessed with two children destined to carry on his bloodline, had been doomed right from the beginning. No wonder considering that even after all those years there wasn't a single night in which he wasn't dreaming about the priest, felt those muscular arms holding him in a tight embrace while a more southwardly located body part moved hard and fast in his throbbing rectum until his eyes closed in rapture and the world blanked out.

The adept sighed softly. A pragmatist through and through, he should really act on the old maxim that it was utterly futile to agonize over things that couldn't be undone anymore. He had made his choice and had to bear the consequences consequently, as he had always done in his long and rather colourful existence. And maybe he would have even come to terms with Vryce's death already if not for one terrible fact. After all, mortality was one of the fundamental constants of all life, be it of man, beast or plant. But shortly before their unique link had ceased to exist, he had felt the man calling for him, whispering his name again and again with his last breaths like a mantra destined to ward off the chill arms of eternity. It had destroyed him utterly.

Half out of his mind with terror no less soul-crushing than on the night the forces of the dark had answered his beckoning, he had instantly left the mess of glass fragments and upset experimental arrangements which had once been a fine laboratory. To hell with developing a cure against the latest mutation of the influenza virus when the man he had never stopped caring deeply about seemed to have tempted fate one time too many. But crossing half the city on foot, turning a deaf ear on the screams of pain and desperate cries for help all around him, had cost him too much time, and the only thing left to him had been closing the priest's hazel eyes. Still beautiful but frighteningly devoid of their usual fire that could both warm even a heart as cold as his or burn, they'd been blindly staring into an unknown place where he couldn't follow. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never if there wasn't more than a grain of truth in the Prophet's famous theorem that the nature of the One God was Mercy and His Word forgiveness.

It went without saying that he had written a letter to Damien's only surviving brother Aaron and paid for the funeral arrangements. It was the least he could do for the man who had saved him in every way a person could be saved. He had even embraced foolish human sentiment in form of ordering a grave decoration every year, to be placed there on the date of their first meeting in that miserable dae in Briand. But to his everlasting shame he had never visited the place again where Vryce's bones were crumbling into dust after the actual funeral, something he verily intended to make up for now.

His heart heavy in his chest, the adept knelt down on the bare ground and started to recite the Prayer for the Dead he had composed himself so many years ago. As all his scriptures it was the epitome of elaborateness, a perfect blend of tender mourning and the hope that God would absolve the deceased of any sin and prepare a place for him or her in heaven. But regardless of the fact that he had poured his lifeblood into each and every line, he yet found the words somewhat wanting. No however well-crafted phrases could possibly do justice to Vryce's kindness, his bravado in the very face of death - or worse - and his loyalty towards his comrades, just to mention a few of his admirable character traits. As far as Gerald's withered human soul was capable of suchlike emotions, he had loved the man for it, still loved him across the impregnable barrier between life and death and presumably would continue doing so until the stars fell from the sky and the world came to an end.

As if on their own account the subject of Hawthorne's speech changed, strayed from the formal into utterly private territory. At first, he couldn't help but cringing at his unwonted bout of sentimentality, but then his words almost tumbled over each other as he finally allowed himself to whisper all those sweet nothings he had denied even his wife Almea in an age now long gone from living memory.

He was just telling Vryce how much he missed him when the atmosphere in the graveyard shifted. The sky was still bright and blue high above him and the birds twittered their cheerful song in the grove of alter oak trees nearby, but all at once every rustling leaf seemed to murmur the warrior knight's name, and the light breeze caressing his face felt like a calloused hand gently wiping the treacherous moisture from his cheeks. Then a very faint, infinitely distant but utterly familiar presence lit up in his mind like a beacon banishing the shadows of old grief and loneliness, and Gerald smiled through his tears. The devastating quake of 1262 had finished what his own stupidity had started, separating their physical bodies till Judgement Day if such a thing would really ever come to pass, but their souls were still one, bound by a link so strong that it had outlasted death itself just as he had foretold what felt like an eternity ago. That was all he needed to know until the one God in His wisdom would hopefully reunite them one day.


End file.
